I've always just grabbed whatever was available and traded for the others, seriously any other method that requires waiting around for a particular situation just seems pointless when you could already be gathering them.

If it were only the wakes I cared about then your statement would be true...

If you find a Distribution Center in an Anarchy system not only can you get wake scans, and ship scans, but you can harvest the three Type-9's at the center for Manufactured Materials without security responding and without getting wanted. The Type-9's respawn after a few minutes once you harvest them. It's a place to kill two birds with one stone (data materials and manufactured materials) and they used to be all over the edges of the bubble...

Which makes sense. They were the most distant areas of populated space and outside of normal supply routes. It also made sense that many of them were in the state of Anarchy since they were so far removed from the reach of civilization and the influence of the Powers.

What doesn't make sense is a capitalist society of 60,000 stations, starports and outposts where everyone has everything they need.

If it were only the wakes I cared about then your statement would be true...

If you find a Distribution Center in an Anarchy system not only can you get wake scans, and ship scans, but you can harvest the three Type-9's at the center for Manufactured Materials without security responding and without getting wanted. The Type-9's respawn after a few minutes once you harvest them. It's a place to kill two birds with one stone (data materials and manufactured materials) and they used to be all over the edges of the bubble...

Which makes sense. They were the most distant areas of populated space and outside of normal supply routes. It also made sense that many of them were in the state of Anarchy since they were so far removed from the reach of civilization and the influence of the Powers.

And regardless of your opinion about how and where to mine materials.. what doesn't make sense is a capitalist society of 60,000 stations, starports and outposts where everyone has everything they need.

I know what you mean, but FDev only focused on positive outcomes on the BGS, so after all states was reset, any interaction would give a positive boost to the states... there was almost no action you really could do to have a negative outcome.... so this gave a us a universe with "happy" citizens... as as soon as players started to do missions/etc, it would in almost all cases have a small happy boost...

So this creates this strange situation where there are basically no places in a miserable state, because as soon we have players doing things, they get pushed into happiness...

Hunger is generally used as a tool for suppressing a population by a smaller leadership, such ideologies are in elite currently.
That there aren't any famine states does seem odd, but wouldn't surprise me if the state is broken.

As far as I remember from FDEV stream, initiating both Famine and Outbreak ais no longer connected to player actions. They are states that occur randomly now. Player actions can reverse them, but not initiate.